Cleaning Your Tongue Helps Prevent Bad Breath

Maintaining a diligent daily dental hygiene regimen is essential to your optimal oral health, and cleaning your tongue is an equally important part of that preventative smile maintenance.

While you brush your teeth – twice a day, for two minutes at a clip – and floss daily, you may be leaving out an important step if you don’t clean your tongue.

Cleaning your tongue should be just as much a part of your daily dental health care routine as brushing your teeth, flossing, & rinsing with mouthwash.

By cleaning your tongue you remove the layer of leftover food particles, bacteria and dead cells that naturally accumulate on your tongue every day.

According to the American Dental Association (ADA), poor oral hygiene is a primary cause of bad breath – along with dry mouth, diet, gum disease and tobacco use.

When you don’t brush, scrape, or otherwise clean your tongue, those oral bacteria which contribute to bad breath accumulate on the surface of your tongue.

Anyone within talking distance will then get a whiff of the result of all that bacteria accumulating on your tongue, and you’ll be pegged as someone with bad breath.

So how do you go about cleaning your tongue?

Brush Your Tongue

This has to be one of the easiest ways to clean your tongue since you already have an effective tool in your hand following your twice daily two minute teeth brushing.

After brushing your teeth, use the bristles of your toothbrush to gently scrub away all the leftover bad-breath-causing bacteria lingering around on your tongue.

Remove this odor-causing buildup by using a small amount of toothpaste and moving your toothbrush all over the top of your tongue.

There are even special toothbrushes out there with a tongue cleaner built right in, try one of those if you feel the need for more specialized equipment.

Or, try one of these…

Use A Tongue Scraper

To really get down & dirty with your tongue cleaning, try using a tongue scraper.

These tooth tools come in all different colors, pick your favorite and get down to the business of cleaning your tongue.

Tongue scrapers gently scrape away the thin layer of mucus that house the bacteria & food debris from the top of your tongue.

Scrape, rinse, repeat.

If your tongue feels sore or begins to bleed, you’re doing it wrong. Take it easy, and don’t use too much force or downward pressure.

How Often Should You Clean Your Tongue?

Make it easy on yourself, if you clean your tongue every time you brush your teeth – and floss – then it will become a normal part of your routine.

Just like with brushing, the universally recommended daily allowance of a tongue cleaning is twice a day.

If you suffer from dry mouth or feel like you have a less than savory taste in your mouth, then you should try cleaning your tongue.

It might make that after lunch meeting a little more palatable for everyone else.

So, How Do You Clean Your Tongue…By Brushing or Scraping?

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